Steven Wilson - Pariah (feat. Ninet Tayeb)
You’re still here, and you’ll dig in again…
This is part of a series of free posts I aim to have here on my Substack to help you get a glimpse of what is going on around here. Expect the regular schedule to resume this Thursday.
Back in 2017, I was already on the path to becoming a full-time musician; I just didn’t know it then. However, the signs were there.
And as someone with an incredible connection to music, the signs usually appear as a song.
I’ve always had this ability to instantly recognize a song that will stick with me forever. I discussed this in my previous newsletter:
When U2 Got Me Unstuck From A Moment
I couldn’t have been more than 10 or 11 years old during this story. I think it was before I turned 11 because U2 had just released All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and I remember not liking “Beautiful Day” that much during its release, though that has since changed a lot.
I also felt the same about Pariah by Steven Wilson (feat. Ninet Tayeb).
I have a friend who is a big Steven Wilson fan. He tried to introduce me to his music via Porcupine Tree or other projects. And he was successful with this one.
I remember putting this song on and just immersing myself in it. It was like this magical moment where the Universe itself spoke to me. I was a software developer at the time, but I wasn’t a typical one.
I worked as a software developer but knew I didn’t belong. I just chose to ignore that part and hope it will go away. Spoiler alert, it did not go away. And the desire to become a musician resurfaced even stronger through this song, one lyric at a time.
I was instantly hooked on this song because I was a pariah. Each and every day I had spent writing code instead of riffs was me being a pariah. I wasn’t bad at it or anything, but whenever I thought about the question “Who am I?”, the answer software developer never felt real. At all. It was just a job, nothing more.
I am a creative person and always have been. From making 8-bit sounds on my Nokia 3310 phone (or 16-bit or whatever sounds used to come out of old phones) to getting Guitar Pro and writing elaborate symphonic pieces, this was my core being.
I joined the software development world because they always advertised this as an incredibly creative world where you can think outside the box and…you know the job descriptions already.
But the reality was always different, and I could not be the creative person I wanted to be.
Steven Wilson’s Pariah reminded me that hope was not lost. I was still there; by that, I meant the true me, the one who writes music and stories, the one who can envision any sound in any possible song.
And that chorus? What is there to say about Ninet other than a YouTube comment that goes:
Ninet’s voice isn’t only heard, it’s felt
And I felt every single word…to the bone. There I was, a pariah, that needed to begin again. And yes, it does take time. That was the moment when the musician's seed, which had been planted long ago, finally started growing.
I am Andrew Milner, and I am signing out. Thank you for taking the time to read this post, and I will see you in the next one!
And since you’re down here, why not take the time to check out my music on Spotify? We have punk, rock, symphonic, new-age (earth, space, shoegaze, and post-rock, to be precise), and a bit of industrial metal music for good measure.